The men went missing from the gay village between 2010 and 2017. The city’s LGBTQ community had long said a killer was preying on men who vanished from the area.

Police said they recovered the remains of seven men in large planters at a residential property in midtown Toronto where McArthur worked while the remains of an eighth man was found in a nearby ravine.

Lead detective Insp. Hank Idsinga has said the McArthur investigation marked the largest forensic examination in the force’s history.

Forensic officers scoured McArthur’s apartment for four months, moving centimetre by centimetre through the residence with the belief it was an alleged murder scene. They seized 1,800 exhibits and snapped more than 18,000 photographs of the scene.

Police also spent months combing the property where the remains were found and also sent cadaver dogs to more than 100 properties linked to McArthur.

The force’s cold case squad is currently investigating a series of homicides in the 1970s related to men with ties to the gay village, but Idsinga has said they’ve found nothing to link those to McArthur.